Monty Python Scripts

Whicker Island

The cast:

FIRST WHICKER

Eric Idle

SECOND WHICKER

Terry Jones

THIRD WHICKER

Michael Palin

FOURTH WHICKER

Graham Chapman

FIFTH WHICKER

John Cleese

FATHER PIERRE

Graham Chapman

The sketch:

(A stock shot of a jet landing which they always use to
introduce 'Whicker's World'. This leads us into Whicker Island - a
tropical island paradise where all the inhabitants have Alan Whicker
suits, glasses and microphones.)

CAPTION: 'WHICKER'S WORLD'

(Various Whickers pace past the camera.)

First Whicker: Today we look at a vanishing race. A
problem people who are fast disappearing off the face of the earth.

Second Whicker: A race who one might say are losing a
winning battle.

Third Whicker: They live in a sunshine paradise, a
Caribbean dream, where only reality is missing.

Fourth Whicker: For this is Whicker Island.

Fifth Whicker: An island inhabited entirely by
ex-international interviewers in pursuit of the impossible dream.

First Whicker: The whole problem of Whicker Island is here
in a nutshell.

Second Whicker: There are just too many Whickers.

Third Whicker: The light-weight suits.

Fourth Whicker: The old school tie.

Fifth Whicker: The practiced voice of the seasoned
campaigner.

First Whicker: Cannot hide the basic tragedy here.

Second Whicker: There just aren't enough rich people left
to interview.

(Cut to a different location.)

Third Whicker: You can't teach an old dog new tricks and
so (turning to a swimming pod with lots of Whickers around it,
wandering with stick mikes and muttering) you find them...

First Whicker:(standing by the pool) .. and
waiting for the inevitable interview.

Second Whicker:(standing fully clothed in the pool)
I talked to the island's only white man, Father Pierre.

(Cut to a different location. Feeling of heat. The third
Whicker stands beside a priest in a white robe.)

Third Whicker: Father Pierre, why did you stay on in this
colonial Campari-land where the clink of glasses mingles with the
murmur of a million mosquitoes, where waterfalls of whisky wash away
the worries of a world-weary Whicker, where gin and tonic jingle in
a gyroscopic jubilee of something beginning With J - Father Pierre,
why did you stay on here?

Father Pierre:(putting on a pair of Whicker-style
glasses) Well mainly for the interviews.